CONCERNS have been raised over reported landside delays at DP World West Swanson Terminal (WST) in Melbourne.
The Container Transport Alliance Australia (CTAA) has referred to a heavy vessel arrival program, causing vessel bunching and an increase in TEU throughput.
This increased volume had coincided with internal civil works which had reduced the ground slot capacity by about 1100TEU.
Container road transport operators have reported that over last weekend and into this week, average Truck Turnaround Times (TTT) have blown out to between two to three hours, when industry would expect landside TTT performance to be well under one hour.
The damaging flow-on impacts of these delays include:
Pressure on transport scheduling to work all available terminal shifts, including weekend and nightshifts, with added labour expense.
Transport operators falling behind in planned import and export container movements, having negative follow-on impacts in completing wharf import pickups within available free time and delivering exports before vessel cut-off.
Added costs of container staging through transport yards and additional lifts.
“The fear of transport operators is that the situation may not improve as WST has a heavy forward vessel schedule with 10 vessels due to berth in the next six days.” CTAA director Neil Chambers said.
“CTAA has been in discussions with DP World’s WST management to determine whether sufficient labour is being rostered across all available terminal operating shifts to boost vehicle booking system slot availability and reduce truck servicing delays.”
He said terminal management had indicated additional labour was being allocated to meet demand and more VBS slots would be made available.
“We haven’t yet experienced a seasonal volume ‘peak’ of container movements through the Port of Melbourne.
“So, heaven help us when the peak does arrive and added volume pressure is applied to all the container terminals in Melbourne.
“If we are already struggling with delays and inefficiencies now, what’s it going to look like then?”
DP World declined to comment when approached by DCN.
Mr Chambers said they were urging all the container terminals, not just WST, to work closely with landside logistics customers to ensure sufficient VBS slot capacity and labour and machine time was allocated to meet demand.